Legal immigrants losing safety net

Elizabeth Schwinn, EXAMINER WASHINGTON BUREAU

Published 4:00 am, Friday, August 2, 1996

WASHINGTON - For legal immigrants receiving welfare benefits or those who had counted on federal aid if they should need a hand, life is about to get a lot tougher now that Congress has finished action on welfare overhaul legislation.

Michael Hill, a lobbyist for the U.S. Catholic Conference, the social action arm of the Catholic Church, had this message for noncitizens: "The safety net has been taken from you."

The new welfare bill on its way to President Clinton

"totally redefines the relationship between immigrants and our government," said Joshua Goldstein of the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant advocacy group. Immigrants "are not entitled to the full protection of the federal government in time of need. . . . There's no compassion here. It's not an attempt to encourage people to become citizens. It's an attempt to penalize people for being immigrants instead of being born here."

Congress completed action on the welfare measure Thursday when the Senate approved it by a lopsided 78-21 vote, one day after the House passed it. President Clinton had said earlier Wednesday that he would sign the bill.

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California's two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both voted against the measure.

Despite lawmakers' enthusiasm for passing a law making good on Clinton's campaign promise to "end welfare as we know it," the measure has been denounced during its journey through Congress by immigrant-rights advocates and antipoverty activists.

Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group, said, "We are deeply disappointed and angered by the actions of Congress and the president . . . in moving forward legislation that amounts to a wholesale dismantling of the nation's safety net under the guise of reform."

Yzaguirre added that under the bill, legal immigrants would be "denied non-welfare services and benefits that their tax dollars have already paid for."

The final bill dismantles virtually all present welfare programs - not just those dealing with immigrants - and gives states the right to fashion their own programs, including work requirements and time limits on benefits.

Before the House passed the bill, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Clinton's decision to sign it would hurt many people, citizens and non-citizens, "My president will boldly throw 1 million into poverty. This is a political bill. It should not be passed into law."

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., the Senate's recognized expert on welfare issues, likewise had harsh words about the draconian nature of the bill.

"The premise of the legislation before us is that the behavior of some adults can be changed by making the lives of their children as wretched as possible," he said. "If misery were motive enough, presumably the poor would have reformed themselves by now."

But GOP congressional leaders called the measure fair. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the House's No. 3 Republican, said, "I think you ought to be a citizen of the United States to get welfare benefits, and I think you ought to be here a while before you get them. . . . I don't think that's harsh."

More than a third of the measure's estimated $56 billion in savings over six years - $21 billion - would come from cutting off immigrant benefits. The bill would deny Medicaid - the federal health care program for the poor - to legal immigrants for at least five years. Immigrants could still get emergency medical care under Medicaid.

The overhaul would bar legal immigrants from receiving food stamps or Supplemental Security Income, a monthly stipend for the destitute elderly, blind or disabled, until they become citizens or have worked here and paid taxes for 10 years. Exceptions are made for refugees and veterans of the U.S. military.

Immigration activists note that legal immigrants, like citizens, work and pay taxes and that many serve in the military. Illegal immigrants already are barred from receiving federal aid under current law.

The new law would allow states, at their option, to bar immigrants from receiving Medicaid; social services such as child care and domestic violence programs; and Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which is the most common welfare program.

Immigrants would not qualify for most other federal poverty assistance for five years. They could be ineligible even then because, for the first time, their sponsor's income would be counted along with theirs. The measure contains some exceptions to the ban on poverty aid, and legal immigrants would still qualify for some need-based federal programs.

The nation had 11.8 million legal immigrants in 1990, according to the Census Bureau. Four million live in California, according to the state's Senate Office of Research.&lt;